Seeking Justice: The Sin Of Injustice
If in Genesis 1 and 2 we see the goodness of creation providing resources for seeking justice, when we turn to Genesis 3, we unveil the identity of the core sin of injustice. Genesis 3 not only teaches us why the world is not the way it ought to be, it also allows us to identify this core sin of injustice. And in identifying the core sin of injustice we’ll be in a much better place to examine injustice in the world around us.
In detailing the events of Genesis 3 there are seven important points that need to be noted. Firstly, Satan advocates for a ‘new morality’ in verse 1 and 4. He disavows the very framework of humanity’s relationship to God, by questioning the legitimacy of it. Satan essentially says, ‘Let’s redefine your relationship to God and let’s not define it according to his law.’ Thinking back to the last post where we dealt with creation as a personal act, therefore making us responsible to a personal being, we see in Genesis 3 that Satan wants to expressly challenge this notion.
Secondly, Satan pits humanity against God; the serpent tells Eve that God lied. The serpent is saying ‘don’t you see, God is jealous, and is imposing his prohibition upon you so that you don’t become like him. Don’t you see God isn’t really looking out for you, and seeking to make you all you can be? The truth of the situation is that he is opposed to you.’
Thirdly, Eve places her desire above the law of God. She concludes that the actualising of her desires is more liberating than the following of God’s law. Not only that, but her desires become the basis of her judgment calls. Her desires say, ‘this tree will make you wise’ instead of saying ‘God’s words when followed is what true wisdom is.’
Fourthly, Adam places Eve above God. A case can be made that Adam was present when the temptation was happening. This comes from the phrase we read: ‘she gave also to her husband with her.’ So the problem is that Adam doesn’t exercise his role as leader and rather takes the place of passivity. He follows the desires of Eve instead of standing on the law of God.
Fifthly, sin leads man to hide from God. The fellowship once enjoyed in the cool of day is now a terror to their hearts. This stands as the first clear consequence of the fall. They hide because of shame and guilt. These psychological ruptures in their soul are a result of the fall; the relationship between humanity and God is already breaking down.
Sixthly, sin leads humans to disassociate from fellow humans. By shifting blame, Adam says ‘let me distance myself from the real culprit.’ Adam in his attempt to clear himself of guilt pits himself against Eve and asserts that they are in differing positions on the issue. Knowing the curse that God gave to the breaking of the Law, Adam is putting Eve in the place of condemnation, rather than himself.
Lastly, humanity’s relationship to creation is cursed. Not only is there a breakdown of humanity’s relationship to God, and man’s relationship to woman, but now there is a breakdown of humanity’s relationship to the rest of creation. Man will now eat from the ground in ‘sorrow’. No longer will the earth produce with the vitality that was characteristic of Eden.
It is within the Genesis 3 narrative of the fall that we discover the core sin of injustice: it is what we see Adam doing when God calls him to account. When God calls Adam to account for their sin, Adam, instead of taking ownership of his sin, opts to condemn Eve for the sake of self-preservation. This is the core sin of injustice; a willingness to scapegoat another in order to justify yourself. Acts of injustices that we see in this world come from this core motivation that we see in Adam and Eve.
It’s important for us to see this sin primarily on a personal level and not on a systematic level. It’s easy to see the way white Americans sacrificed African Americans for the sake of their economic advancement in the 1700s. Or how Hitler sacrificed Jews to advance the Aryan race in the 20th century. And it is likely that when we see this core sin of injustice in the fall narrative our attention is turned to systematic cases of this core sin. However, total depravity teaches us that sin affects everybody and so this core sin is present in everyone. It’s no good to point at one people group as the ‘sin’ that needs to be banished. We see this trend far too often in political circles. Liberals will often speak of capitalism as the sin of the society, whereas conservatives will usually call the 99% to stop complaining about their problems and take ‘personal responsibility’ (after all, the sin issue lies in the unwillingness of the majority to work for their own success and fortune, right?). The 20th Century Russian Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn speaks to this default posture to others in society when he writes
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
When we think about the core sin of injustice on a personal level, we’re asking this question: How do we throw others under the bus for the sake of our own advancement? How do we trample on the dignity and respect that they are worthy of? How does this ego-centricism shows itself at every level of human interaction, and in every sphere of our human lives? With that being said, it is still right for us to view this on a systematic level. And when we look at a justice issue, our goal is to locate the core sin of injustice: where are people being sacrificed, and trampled on, for the sake of someone else’s advancement? Where do we see the dignity of the image bearer being denied?
This prevents us from making unwarranted claims about justice issues or beating around the bush. It forces us to be very direct and specific about the sin/issue that needs to be seriously dealt with. In the last post, I gave the example of Harvie Conn and his missionary experience in South Korea. The core sin of injustice in Conn’s case was the exploitation of economically, and socially, vulnerable women for the sake of male sexual gratification. For Conn, then, it was a matter of dealing with that core sin so that the dignity of those women could be respected. Hitting an issue other than this core sin will lead to a well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective and possibly harmful attempt at seeking justice.
